AIROLI: Con­tin­u­ing its crack­down on il­le­gal build­ings, City and In­dus­trial De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion ( Cidco) de­mol­ished around seven shanties in Airoli on Thurs­day. In a sim­i­lar drive, the plan­ning author­ity also razed an il­le­gal struc­ture at Sec­tor 18 in New Pan­vel.

“We de­mol­ished six shanties in Sec­tor 10 area apart from other en­croach­ments like nurs­eries and fish ponds. One more struc­ture was de­mol­ished in Sec­tor 3,” said a Cidco of­fi­cial on con­di­tion of anonymity.

“All th­ese struc­tures faced grave dan­ger as they were lo­cated un­der the high tension wires,” said the of­fi­cial.

“The struc­tures were con­structed on Cidco land with­out hav­ing any land ti­tle and de­vel­op­ment per­mis­sion from the plan­ning author­ity. The Cidco re­moved the en­croach­ments ac­cord­ing to due process of law,” said the of­fi­cial.

The ac­tion fol­lows the or­ders of the high court and di­rec­tions of Yo­gesh Mhase, ad­di­tional col­lec­tor and Cidco’s chief con­troller of unau­tho­rised con­struc­tion (CCUC) to take strin­gent ac­tion against the il­le­gal con­struc­tions in Navi Mum­bai.

The de­mo­li­tion led to dis­tress among fam­i­lies that were ren­dered home­less.

“The land was gifted to my grand­fa­ther in 1956 and passed on to my fa­ther. My par­ents lived here. We have all the orig­i­nal doc­u­ments and our own­er­ship is recorded with the rev­enue depart­ment,” said Suresh Kumb­har, a dis­placed dweller.

“Cidco had served us no­tice twice on the ba­sis of bo­gus doc­u­ments. It has ig­nored all our doc­u­ments. We never sold our land and it was never ac­quired by Cidco,” said Kumb­har.

He also said he was not given enough no­tice pe­riod to move his be­long­ings in time.

The drive was un­der­taken with the sup­port of po­lice of­fi­cers from the Ra­bale po­lice sta­tion.

The Cidco has planned node­wise de­mo­li­tions, start­ing from

Airoli.

For the first phase, Airoli has been cho­sen where a to­tal of 31 struc­tures will be de­mol­ished.

Ar­eas such as Goth­ivli, Ghan­soli, Kopar Khairane, Bonkode, Ko­pri, Juhugaon, San­pada and Nerul con­tinue to be hotspots of il­le­gal con­struc­tions.

While Navi Mum­bai Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion (NMMC) is yet to take ac­tion against il­le­gal struc­tures, Cidco has al­ready be­gun de­mo­li­tions.

Cidco had pub­lished a list of 219 il­le­gal struc­tures in Au­gust. Of th­ese around 138 are in NMMC ju­ris­dic­tion. The rest are in Uran and Pan­vel re­gions.

BACHCHAN KU­MAR

An un­der-con­struc­tion build­ing at Sec­tor 18 in New Pan­vel be­ing pulled down on Thurs­day as Cidco con­tin­ued its crack­down against il­le­gal con­struc­tions.

BACHCHAN KU­MAR

(Above) A bull­dozer razes a slum at Sec­tor 3, Airoli, on Thurs­day. (Be­low) Dis­placed slum dwellers out on the road with their be­long­ings af­ter their hut­ment was de­mol­ished.